SCOTT JOHNSON: Choking On The Administrative State.

INTERNET PRICING IN THE REAL WORLD.

FASTER, PLEASE: DNA-Based Research May Have Unveiled Long-Sought Diabetes Treatment.

JOHN EDWARDS IS Tanned, Rested, And Ready To Take Your Call If You’ve Been Injured In An Accident. I guess he still has his law license. Huh.

I REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS Tennessee Supreme Court kerfuffle, but there’s nothing wrong with a state court judge looking to decisions from other states on related issues. They’re not controlling, of course, but they’re often persuasive authority and state courts do this all the time.

SMART DIPLOMACY UPDATE: Are U.S. Sanctions Isolating NASA Instead of Russia? “At an economic forum in Russia, European, Russian and Indian space industry leaders plead to keep international tensions from scuttling joint programs and business arrangements. Missing? NASA and U.S. space companies.”

FROM PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE, Let’s use Rule 14a-8 to fight the Purge of Conservatives.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: U.S. Man Finds His Lost Mother In A Stone Age Tribe.

SEE, THIS IS THE KIND OF ISSUE THAT THE GOP COULD MAKE HAY OUT OF: Licensed Dentist Attacked for Charging Too Little.

UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED: What if the community stages a conversation about race and it’s the black man who ends up anguishing that he’s said the wrong thing? Maybe “the community” shouldn’t be “staging” conversations. Maybe people should just have them, and not have to fear the Thought Police.

Yeah, crazy, I know.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: “They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, our moralistic Department of Justice would be trying to shut down porn stars. And they were right!”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 383.

ELIANA JOHNSON: Chris Christie’s Lawyer Problem.

DEMOCRATIC URBAN REVOLT SPREADS TO CHICAGO?

But there are echoes of a broader trend underway. We might be seeing the end of an era of relatively moderate, centrist politics in major American cities, as teacher unions, minorities and more left wing activists flex their muscles in places like New York, Newark and now Chicago.

This poses questions for the Democratic party nationally. If highly-visible urban Democratic centers are moving sharply to the left while the rest of the country looks on in displeasure, it will be harder for national leaders to straddle the divide between left urban grassroots and the suburban and centrist voters (not to mention the Wall Street money) needed to prevail in national contests.

There’s not enough money to buy them off any more, and they want to flex their muscles while they still can.

LGBT ACTIVISTS’ ATTACKS ON DOUG LAYCOCK BECAUSE OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLARSHIP are generating pushback across the ideological spectrum.

UPDATE: You don’t start a dialogue with FOIA requests. “If the students truly want to start a dialogue — then they should actually start a dialogue. This requires actually engaging with the substance of Professor Laycock’s views and bringing something to the table other than their suppositions about how particular legal rules may affect their immediate policy concerns. Thus far, all they’ve delivered is the posture of entitlement and the tactics of thugs.”

The thugs are Heather Cronk, Greg Lewis, and Stephanie Montenegro. Future employers take note.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: U.S. On Brink Of Whiskey Shortage.

AT AMAZON, Stylish Savings galore.

Also, today’s the last day to get 25% or more off on Outdoor Clothing.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: “They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, our moralistic Department of Justice would be trying to shut down porn stars. And they were right!”

SO THIS PIECE IN THE DAILY BEAST ISN’T BAD, but what got me was the passage where the Santa Barbara shooter is described as “a disgruntled, well-off white boy.” His mother was Indonesian, making him mixed race. Is this another case of the “White Hispanic” phenomenon?

IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, an amusing editorial cartoon about the IRS Scandal.

IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME: Reliance on Russian rockets has left us in a pickle. “The U.S. government is being forced to use satellite launchers developed without government financing because the usual methods of obtaining these launchers is falling apart and currently is unable to supply enough rockets to get all American military satellites into orbit. The immediate cause of this problem is the recent (since earlier this year) Russian aggression against Ukraine. The U.S. responded to this aggression by placing sanctions on some Russian officials and firms. Russia responded to that by halting RD-180 shipments to the United States. That’s breach of contract and it will do enormous damage to Russian exports in the future because now many countries and firms realize that a contract with a Russian firm can be cancelled by the Russian government for any reason. This was always seen as a risk when doing business with Russia and many Western firms declined to do so or have pulled out of Russia in the last decade because of the growing unreliability of Russia as a business partner.”

Having been peripherally involved in the decision to use Russian rockets — which was first seriously looked at during the George H.W. Bush administration — here are a couple of thoughts. First, one reason was to keep ex-Soviet rocket engineers employed in Russia, so that they wouldn’t wind up working for third-world missile programs just to avoid starvation. That succeeded, mostly. The second is that while the transition is rocky, forcing the U.S. government to use satellite launchers “developed without government financing” isn’t a bug, but a feature.

#WARONMEN: Shocking video shows how members of the public intervene when they see man attacking his girlfriend… but stand by and LAUGH when the roles are reversed.

A hard-hitting experiment has revealed how strangers react differently when seeing domestic abuse depending on the gender of the aggressor.

A video filmed with hidden cameras at a London park shows a male actor attacking his ‘girlfriend’ in front of onlookers who immediately rush to help, with one shouting: ‘Oi mate, what’s wrong with you?’

The man is told ‘someone will call the police if you carry on doing that to someone’, before a passer-by says to the woman: ‘You don’t have to put up with that honey, he’s not worth it’.

The experiment is then conducted with the same actors – but this time, the woman is the aggressor, attacking him and saying: ‘Don’t try to walk away – listen to me when I’m talking to you.’

However, instead of reacting with shock, nobody watching even attempts to help the man. They actually seem rather entertained by the incident, stopping to stare and laughing about it.

If it weren’t for double standards, nowadays, we’d have no standards at all. Video at the link.

PRIORITIES: Spending $1+ Billion On … Presidential Helicopters.

MORE ON THE WHITE HOUSE’S OUTING OF A CIA STATION CHIEF, AND The Washington Post’s Spin: “So… Bush never actually outed a CIA agent — Richard Armitage did — but that didn’t stop the Left from engaging in a two year witchhunt. But Obama can out CIA agents with impunity, I guess, no investigation required?”

Plus, the WaPo’s reliance on passive voice.